Yoshino claims that he was riveted by the 3,000-page trial transcript; his cogent, incisive narrative is equally captivating.
The story of a crucial trial to legitimize same-sex marriage.
As in his earlier book on civil rights, Covering (2006), legal scholar Yoshino (Constitutional Law/New York Univ. School of Law; A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare's Plays Teach Us About Justice, 2011, etc.) interweaves autobiography into a crisp, shrewd analysis of Hollingsworth v. Perry, the 12-day federal trial that considered California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. A gay Asian-American, Yoshino married in 2009 as the suit was filed in California, and he and his husband became parents of a daughter and son during the four years of litigation. Centered on issues of love, commitment and family, the trial had personal as well as political and professional meaning for him. Its transcript, he writes, “captured the best conversation I had seen on same-sex marriage—better than any legislative hearing, any academic debate, or any media exchange.” The transcript contained intellectually rigorous arguments, pointed cross-examination of witnesses’ claims and allegations, and intense focus on points of law. Trials about gay rights issues, as one judge noted, were educational experiences that offered “an excellent opportunity to replace ignorance with knowledge.” In the Prop 8 case, Judge Vaughn Walker insisted on moving quickly to trial; he also wanted the proceedings streamed live to federal courthouses and posted on YouTube—both of which were blocked by the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs were represented by Ted Olson and David Boies, who had argued against each other in Bush v. Gore. The “inspired” pairing of the two savvy strategists, the author contends, “symbolically reunited the two halves of the country.” Besides chronicling testimony by experts and witnesses, Yoshino clearly explains relevant legal terms and identifies the three rationales that ultimately became prominent in the case: “optimal child rearing, the prevention of the dissolution of marriage, and the suppression of irresponsible procreation.”
Yoshino claims that he was riveted by the 3,000-page trial transcript; his cogent, incisive narrative is equally captivating.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-34880-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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